100 million kg tea auction

OUR CORRESPONDENT

Siliguri, Feb.11: The Siliguri Tea Auction Centre has sold 100 million kilogram of brew in a year for the first time in 38 years.

“It is an achievement for the centre which has been conducting tea auctions since 1976 when it was opened. We had crossed the 90 million kilogram mark in 2011 and for the first time, we could sell 100 million kilogram of tea in a year for the 2013-14 fiscal. Out of the entire tea sold through the centre, 99 per cent was produced in the Dooars, Terai and Darjeeling,” said K.K. Mehra, chairman of Siliguri Tea Auction Committee. The remaining 1 per cent was routed from Bihar and Assam, sources said.

In 1976, when the centre was opened, the average selling price of tea was recorded at Rs 11.05 (per kg) and the total sale was around 2.6 million kilogram. In 2011, over 93 million kilogram of tea was sold through the centre. The sale increased to 94 million kilogram in 2012.

This time the average price was Rs 122.27 per kg. It was around Rs 120 in 2012-13 fiscal.

“We have 489 sellers, 433 buyers and nine brokers as our members,” said Pankaj Das, the secretary of the auction committee.